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Collings Guitars And The Completed Guitar Build

May 07, 2008
Collings Guitars Assembly 3

We've already seen the process of building a guitar from ground up at Collings Guitars. Now the Collings luthiers put the finishing touches on the guitars before they're ready to go out the door and get played. It's a delicate process that involves a lot of tedious sanding to get each guitar looking its Sunday's best.

Visit Colligns Guitars' official website for more information

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STEVE MCCREARY: About 10 days, and then there's more sanding. It's very tedious.

May I sir?

Yeah, this is only a few thousand and so it's got to be -- he's very good at this. You got to sand these surfaces without leaving big sanding marks going off the ends of these over the surfaces here, sand out these surfaces. We got quite a reputation for very nice, clear, sharp edges and sharp corners. It's very difficult to do. It takes a lot of work. Eddie's been doing this for years. He's very good at it, and it's a labor of love and hand sanding blocks.

[INAUDIBLE]

[COLLINGS GUITARS EMPLOYEES MACHINE-SANDING SOME GUITARS]

Here's a mahogany-top guitar. We actually make quite a few mahogany these days, don't we?

LUTHIER: I guess.

STEVE MCCREARY: That's mahogany with a sunburst with a core sound different than a spruce-top guitar. So we saw a neck -- a body being built and finished and a neck being built and finished. After they're buffed out, they come into this room. You can see the guitars with the clamps on it. We will actually take -- we'll take en route the finish off the guitar top and glue the bridge wood to wood. We'll route some finish off where the fretboard glues to the top of the guitar, and the next day we'll mill the fretboard, dress the fret in, ground the frets, make the nut, make the saddles, put the tuners on, string them up. On the third day, after tight stringing tension overnight, we'll check our nut slots, we'll check the relief of the neck, check our saddle heights, course with everything over, make sure we didn't do any dings or nicks or scratches.

You can see a body here that's ready for wiring. The body's [INDISCERNIBLE] cavities are put in. Next will be the pickups and the [INDISCERNIBLE]. WE see quite a few accolades for our fretwork and fret milling.

PATRICK OGLE: How long are you [INDISCERNIBLE]?

LUTHIER: Since 1984.

PATRICK OGLE: 1984. A veteran.

STEVE MCCREARY: We do a few extra things. We make pickup rings and their knobs and truss rod covers out of our grained ivoroid. A little tortoise flare there, these little things that we like to do to set us apart. Here's Jason Lollar Pickups. Jason's a great winder from Seattle. He worked with a lot of pickups, doing all our R&D for the guitars and very consistent, very good quality pickups. Good guys to work with. We're really excited to have them, and they sound great.

This is the final inspection room. We get the guitars in from setup, check them out, do any final polishing. We put the pickguards on and we try to get them out of the door.

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